The Miner

by Sōseki Natsume

  Of course, a critic like Robbe-Grillet would accuse Sōseki of having compromised with the reactionary forces of anthropocentrism, of having once faced the void without dizziness, then chosen to experience it as suffering, “tragedified” it.56 And, to some extent, he would be right. Sōseki’s novels lost the bold, stoically comic inventiveness of The Miner and came to an end with the omnisciently narrated Light and Dark, one of the closest Japanese approximations to a nineteenth-century European novel and one of the most tedious exercises in the language, the neat little cliff-hangers at the end of each day’s installment suggesting a jaded professionalism that Sōseki had never displayed before.

  In a sense, then, Sōseki’s later career moved backward, from the very forefront of the avant-garde in 1908 to a tired, old white elephant in 1916. All the great works in between, however, and Light and Dark, too, shared the insights that Sōseki first presented in The Miner, and these above all were what established him as Japan’s great modern novelist.

  Notes

  1. Parenthetical figures refer to page numbers in the translation, which is based on the standard text of Kōfu found in SZ 3: 435– 674. Checks of questionable passages revealed no discrepancies between this text and the original serialization in Tokyo Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 1–Apr. 6, 1908. The original manuscript has been lost. For a detailed discussion of textual variations (all of the most insignificant sort), see Itō Sei and Ara Masahito, eds., Sōseki bungaku zenshū, 11 vols. (Shūeisha, 1970), 4: 855–67, 877–83. The original 96 installment breaks indicated in Volume 5 of the 1994 Complete Works can be found in the translation at the following points:

  1 Been walking, 2 Besides, I’m not, 3 So here I was, 4 “Hey, kid, want a job? 5 “What kind of job is it?” 6 There was a table, 7 This time, as soon, 8 When his special laugh, 9 All but insisting, 10 My only thought at the time, 11 I didn’t see any need to ask, 12 The fact is, I come from, 13 And so I decided to blow myself, 14 I stood in the station entrance, 15 We were sitting together, 16 For some reason, I wanted, 17 Finally, the two of us boarded, 18 The minute you go to sleep, 19 Before long, two or three, 20 First of all, the flat, 21 I noticed that the sun, 22 Now, it’s true that I was hungry, 23 It would have been fun, 24 The two quickly wound, 25 In this way, I suddenly found, 26 At the end of the town was a bridge, 27 Whether or not the sight, 28 Chōzō asked him, “Hey, 29 It was nothing at all for, 30 Soon the path became, 31 In this state, I covered, 32 Suddenly, out of the darkness, 33 So now our group, 34 Back then, I was following, 35 Inside, the place stank, 36 I became sleepy again, 37 Now that I was down, 38 So now Chōzō was out, 39 I was buried in the clouds, 40 The four of us crossed, 41 As a result, I still don’t, 42 A boiler boss is, 43 “I … I’m not looking, 44 Young and inexperienced, 45 In the course of this, 46 “All right,” Mr. Hara said, 47 Following his instructions, 48 Just then the old woman, 49 Whatever the reason, 50 “What the hell, 51 It’s easy to imagine the outcome, 52 All I could do, 53 “Hey, where’s old Kin?” 54 Then, as if the entire, 55 Just then, the sick man, 56 “Let’s eat,” one of, 57 I looked up to find, 58 This time I opened, 59 Unable either to lie, 60 If the whole boiler, 61 “This goes on your ass,” 62 “This’s the door, 63 I came to a stop, 64 Just three feet ahead, 65 Crawling along, 66 Now Hatsu lay, 67 Climbing ten or fifteen, 68 The lantern was fastened, 69 Suddenly my nearest, 70 “Don’t let it scare, 71 The side road ran, 72 Retracing our steps, 73 Grasping the top, 74 When I rested a moment, 75 “Are we going on?” 76 “It’s all right,” he said, 77 Now I was alone, 78 My feet were ready, 79 I tried bringing, 80 By nature, I’m not, 81 Hatsu, who had been, 82 I stood still, 83 He was a long-legged, 84 What most surprised me, 85 His question took me, 86 Both of us kept silent, 87 Yasu had taken a few, 88 Yasu had called himself, 89 Hatsu looked both, 90 To reach the boiler, 91 “The bastards, 92 If I were to write, 93 While thoughts like this, 94 “Hey, you! Go, 95 Bronchitis. The first step, 96 That night, I was calm.

  2. “Nyūsha no ji,” SZ 11: 494. For Sōseki’s resignation and his ideas on the social role of the novelist, see Jay Rubin, Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State (Seattle: Universit,y of Washington Press, 1984), pp. 70–73. For an introduction to Sōseki’s life and works, see Edwin McClellan, Two Japanese Novelists: Sōseki and Tōson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). See also Donald Keene, Dawn to the West, 2 vols. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984), 1: 305–54.

  3. Komiya Toyotaka, Natsume Sōseki, 3 vols. (Iwanami shoten, 1973), 2: 261–62. A casual piece in the August 1907 Chūō Kōron (“Bundan jigon,” p. 135) suggested (ironically, in retrospect) that Sōseki might be able to recoup his earlier reputation with his next novel, and the New Year review of literary events in the January issues of both that journal (“Teibi bundan gaikan,” p. 223) and Nihon oyobi Nihonjin (“Bungei jihyō,” p. 55) spoke of his cooling critical reception. The newspaper Kokumin Shimbun reported on October 24, 1907, that The Poppy was not well received, but also, on October 31, that two publishers had been competing fiercely for rights to the book. See Hirano Seisuke, Shimbun shūsei Natsume Sōseki zō, 4 vols. (Meiji-Taishō-Shōwa Shimbun kenkyū kai, 1979), 1: 157.

  4. SZ 14: 587, 15: 295–96. Komiya, 2: 263.

  5. SZ 13: 274. The notes suggest that Sōseki’s informant left Tokyo at nine o’clock, reaching Ōmiya (seventeen miles northwest of Tokyo on the old Nakasendō Highway) at two in the morning, where he slept on a Kagura stage. He encountered the procurer in a tea house, though by an avenue of pine trees rather than in a seemingly endless grove. (It might also be mentioned that the model for Chōzō, whose name was Hayashi, wore a jacket with straight sleeves, not the ratty dotera.) This meeting must have occurred much farther out from Tokyo than Ōmiya, since it was in Maebashi, another thirty-five miles northwest of Ōmiya, that the young man boarded the train with the procurer. They traveled east and north on the train to Utsunomiya, then continued (on foot, presumably) to Nikkō, where they arrived at night, having picked up another man and two thirteen-year-old boys somewhere along the way. Walking upstream by the Daiya River (the river feeding the famous Kegon Falls, a favorite site for romantic suicides, as mentioned in the text), they came to a sandal maker’s shop, where they spent the night, finally reaching the Ashio mine the next day. Sōseki is not very precise with his geography, however. He has the protagonist leave Tokyo by the Senju Bridge, which would have sent the fellow off straight north and made a distraught young man’s detour to the Nakasendō most unlikely. (In fact, the correct route would have taken him across the Toda Bridge.) He also has the narrator call the Nakasendō by the informal name ‘Itabashi Highway,’ used only for the section of the highway extending out as far as Ōmiya, although the town where the protagonist and Chōzō board the train, within easy walking distance of the pine grove, is modeled on Maebashi, well beyond Ōmiya. The Nakasendō Highway was one of the five great highways of the Edo period (1603–1868). Like the more famous Tōkaidō, the Nakasendō connected Edo (now Tokyo) with Kyoto, but it passed through the central mountains instead of running along the coast. The first post station, some seven miles northwest of central Edo (but long since absorbed by the spreading Tokyo metropolis), was Itabashi, and the ten-mile section of the Nakasendō from there to Ōmiya was called the Itabashi Highway (kaidō). None of this is of the least importance, of course, as far as an understanding of the novel is concerned. Sōseki expunges almost all place names and even has the narrator tell us pointedly that he chooses not to reveal the name of the town to which Chōzō brought him (p. 50). Indeed, we might even fault Sōseki for being so inconsistent as to have mentioned the name of the Itabashi Highway at all.

  6. Sōseki was also a scholar and literary theoretician. See Natsume Sōseki, Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings, ed. Michael K. Bourdaghs et. al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009)..

  7. McClellan, Two Japanese Novelists, p. 56.

  8. Howard S. Hibbett, “Natsume Sōseki and the Psychological Novel,” in Donald H. Shively, ed., T
radition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 346.

  9. SZ 6: 278; quoted, slightly altered, from the translation by Edwin McClellan, Kokoro (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1957), p. 238.

  10. Hibbett, p. 346.

  11. Tanomi ni naranai, tayori ni naranai, ate ni naranai, etc.

  12. “Yo no naka ni shin’yō-suru ni taru mono ga sonzai shi-enai rei” SZ 6: 169; McClellan, Kokoro, p. 141.

  13. SZ 4: 536–37; cf. translation by Norma Moore Field, And Then (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), p. 186.

  14. SZ 2: 324; quoted from the translation by Alan Turney, Botchan (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1972), p. 108. Cf. the J. Cohn translation, Botchan (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2005), p. 108.

  15. SZ 2: 721–22.

  16. SZ 2: 318; Turney, p. 101 or Cohn, p. 102 and SZ 4: 24; cf. translation by Jay Rubin, Sanshirō (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977), p. 18; or (London: Penguin Books, 2009), p. 18.

  17. SZ 6: 77; McClellan, Kokoro, p. 61.

  18. “Sōseki ron,” Chūō Kōron (Mar. 1908), pp. 34–56; quotations from pp. 53–54.

  19. “Kōfu no sakui to shizen-ha denki-ha no kōshō,” SZ 16: 578– 80; Komiya, 3: 1–3. The detailed descriptions of mining activities not covered in the notes suggest that Sōseki was consulting Arai as he wrote. A postcard dated January 10 (the tenth day of serialization) mentions that “Mr. Miner” came to Sōseki’s home “again” that day and corrected his misuse of some mine argot in a section of the manuscript that would not appear for another month (SZ 14: 670). Apparently Arai came to work for Sōseki as a houseboy after that, but he made a rapid departure in April, the month that serialization ended, when Sōseki heard he had been complaining to a journalist that none of the profits from The Miner had been shared with him (Komiya, 3: 8–9). No doubt some of the strains of this situation are echoed when Sōseki has his narrator speak of “hiring a student houseboy mainly to do chores for you while telling yourself that you’re doing it primarily to help him out” (p. 120).

  20. Katayama Koson, “Sōseki ron,” Chūō Kōron (Mar. 1908), p. 34.

  21. “Bungeikai,” Taiyō (Feb. 1, 1907), p. 245; Kōbōshi, “Bungei jihyō,” Nihon oyobi Nihonjin (Jan. 1, 1908), p. 57; “Bundan,” Chūō Kōron (Feb. 1908), p. 161.

  22. “Sōseki ron,” Chūō Kōron (Mar. 1908), pp. 45, 56. The editor was Takita Choin. See Sōseki’s letter to this distinguished editor on the forthcoming feature, SZ 14: 676, in which he resignedly notes Choin’s dislike of The Miner.

  23. SZ 16: 578–80.

  24. Yoshida Seiichi, ed., Natsume Sōseki hikkei (Gakutōsha, 1971).

  25. See, for example, the important Nihon bungaku kenkyū shiryō kankōkai, ed., Nihon bungaku kenkyū shiryō sōsho: Natsume Sōseki (Yūseidō, 1970). There is one essay on The Miner in the following five-volume set, which contains essays on everything: Miyoshi Yukio, Hiraoka Toshio, Hirakawa Sukehiro, and Etō Jun, eds., Kōza: Natsume Sōseki, 5 vols. (Yūhikaku, 1981). Rare, too, is the literary journal with its “special Sōseki edition” that devotes any space to The Miner.

  26. Etō jun, Natsume Sōseki (Keisō Shobō, 1965), pp. 85–86. Etō specifically negates Nakamura Shin’ichirō’s “simplistic” identification of The Miner with Joycean stream-of-consciousness writing. In her monumental 665-page study, crammed with minutiae and lengthy essays, Kumasaka Atsuko quotes briefly from The Miner in her discussion of Sanshirō. See her Natsume Sōseki no kenkyū (Ōfūsha, 1973), p. 49 and passim.

  27. Miyoshi Yukio, “Kaisetsu,” Kōfu (Shinchōsha, 1976), pp. 226, 229.

  28. Edwin McClellan, “Introduction to Sōseki,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 22 (Dec. 1959): 150–208; revised and expanded in his Two Japanese Novelists.

  29. Beongcheon Yu, Natsume Sōseki (New York: Twayne, 1969), pp. 64–69.

  30. Nakamura Shin’ichirō, “Kōfu no imi,” in Bungei dokuhon: Natsume Sōseki II (Kawade shobō shinsha, 1977), pp. 167–69; Shimada Atsushi, “Sōseki no shisō,” in Nihon bungaku kenkyū, pp. 113–17; Matsui Sakuko, Natsume Sōseki as a Critic of English Literature (Tokyo: Center for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1975), p. 120.

  31. Keene, 1: 322–24; Yu, p. 64.

  32. Senuma Shigeki has noted that Sōseki’s examination of his internal depths continued in 1908 with “The Paddy Bird” (Bunchō) and “Ten Nights of Dream” (Yume jūya; translated by Aiko Itō and Graeme Wilson in Ten Nights of Dream, Hearing Things, The Heredity of Taste [Rutland: Tuttle, 1974]), and while he feels that Sōseki failed to meld theory and technique in The Miner, he does recognize it as a philosophical turning point for him. By the time Sōseki finished The Miner, says Senuma, he had come to see anxiety and terror as innate elements of human life. Natsume Sōseki (Tokyo: Daigaku shuppan kai, 1970), pp. 139–43.

  33. Mu-seikaku ron. I have used the word “character” for seikaku and also for jinkaku (pp. 217, 219), allowing the context to convey the greater ethical content of the latter. In a few instances, I have translated jinkaku as “individuality” (pp. 75, 76). If anything, this narrowing of terminology in English only serves to enhance Sōseki’s study of the interplay between psychological amorphousness and social and literary structure.

  34. Kumasaka, pp. 29–45; Senuma cited therein, p. 38.

  35. “Bungei no tetsugakuteki kiso,” SZ 11: 94–95.

  36. The notes include only the sketchiest details of the geographical setting. Some of the miners’ dialogues with the newcomer are nearly identical with those in the notes, as are the boy’s first encounters with the slippery rice and the bedbugs in the dormitory known as a “boiler” (hanba). Young Arai was led through the tunnels by an unnamed miner (the model for Hatsu), following much the same route as in the book, and experienced a few emotional moments alone down in the dark, during which he had thoughts of suicide. Later, as in the novel, he became separated from his guide and encountered a miner named Kin (the same name as that of the sick old man in the boiler), who became the model for Yasu. Unlike the other miners, this Kin had a “normal” face, and he delivered the boy a moving speech concerning his own misspent youth, noting that although the statute of limitations on his crime would be running out the following year, the sin he had committed (apparently in the pleasure quarter) would never disappear. (This reference to the statute of limitations under the criminal code of 1880 provides only the vaguest hint as to the exact nature of Kin/Yasu’s crime. SZ 3: 732, n644.2.) He offered to pay Arai’s fare if only the boy would leave the mine. He “grieved,” he said, both for the boy and for society if Arai should stay “buried” there (though, significantly, he did not engage in Yasu’s appeal to patriotism). Arai’s decision against suicide and against taking Kin’s money was much as detailed in the book, and his visit to the infirmary, leading to the diagnosis of bronchitis, also included a whiff of medicine that reminded him of death, but the notes contain no mention of a flower seen before and after the examination, another important departure by Sōseki from his source. The subsequent action of the novel is very close to the notes, which also observe that Arai obeyed Kin’s admonition never to write to him in the mine. SZ 13: 274–86.

  37. Tamai Takayuki, Natsume Sōseki ron (Ōfūsha, 1976), pp. 79–80.

  38. Keene, 1: 324. Tamai, pp. 72–73, has noted Sōseki’s likely interest in the 1907 labor uprisings at Ashio and other mines, sparked by the oppressive “boiler” system that surfaces in the novel, but, like other scholars, he recognizes that Sōseki’s purpose has nothing to do with social commentary. It might also be noted that, having decided to make his narrator a mature man looking back at events of his youth, Sōseki could hardly feature events that had made headlines only a few months earlier.

  39. Sasaki Masanobu, “Kōfu ron,” in Uchida Michio and Kubota Yoshitarō, eds., Sakuhinron: Natsume Sōseki (Sōbunsha, 1976), p. 129.

  40. Komiya Toyotaka (1884–1966) buys the sentiment whole hog; see his “Kaisetsu,” SZ 3: 693–94. Senuma Shigeki (b. 1904) notes the a
pparent contradiction between Yasu’s solid character (jinkaku) and the theory of characterlessness (mu-seikaku), and he admits that “it is not entirely clear how” the protagonist is saved (Natsume Sōseki, p. 139). The psychiatrist Doi Takeo (b. 1920) speaks of the Yasu encounter as “therapeutic in the truest sense of the word”; see The Psychological World of Natsume Sōseki, trans. William J. Tyler (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 26. Tamai Takayuki (b. 1929) agrees with Doi and the others who speak of salvation (Natsume Sōseki ron, p. 78). Ochi Haruo (1929–83) also sees the subterranean encounter as an affirmation of character (jinkaku), but he admits that “the structure of the novel does not seem to take this as a conclusion,” and while the meeting with Yasu “is of course not entirely meaningless, it seems that we cannot quite call it a spiritual rebirth”; see Sōseki shiron (Kadokawa shoten, 1971), p. 145. Kamiyama Mutsumi (b. 1947) limits his discussion to viewing The Miner as a technical experiment, but he dismisses the Yasu episode as a “secondary element of the novel”; see Natsume Sōseki ron—josetsu (Kokubunsha, 1980), pp. 275–77. Satō Yasumasa (b. 1917) is the only member of the prewar generation to note the significance of the “right out of a novel” remark, and while he does not cite Sasaki’s 1976 study, he has clearly benefited from it; see “Kōfu no kokoromi,” in Miyoshi Yukio, et. al., eds., Kōza: Natsume Sōseki, 2: 232–55, esp. 247ff.

  41. Alain Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 27.

  42. August Strindberg, Eight Famous Plays, trans. Edwin Björkman and N. Erichsen (London: G. Duckworth, 1949), pp. 105–7.

  43. The connection was made by Komiya Toyotaka in “Kaisetsu,” SZ 3: 693.

  44. Strindberg, p. 111. It is unlikely that Sōseki was aware of Strindberg’s ideas. A letter he wrote in 1914 (six years after The Miner) mentioned that he was not familiar with Miss Julie, and other references to Strindberg appear only in his later correspondence. SZ 15: 319.